Shaping up for a major thrust onto the continent, the Cambridge Instrument Company Plc is proposing to merge with privately-held Wild Leitz Holding AG, a Swiss manufacturer of instruments, optical microscopes, optical measuring and inspection equipment and Leica cameras based in Zurich. The firm also has a joint venture with Prime Computer Inc, Wild GIS Inc on geographic information systems. Terms of the merger have not yet been announced, although it is intended that Cambridge Instruments’ Dr Terence Gooding will be chairman and chief executive of the new company, with Dr Markus Rauh, chief executive of Wild Leitz, as president and chief operating officer. Controlling Wild Leitz shareholder Sr Stephen Schmidheiny will be deputy chairman. At UKP382m turnover, Wild Leitz is about three times the size of Cambridge Instruments, employing 8,876 people against 2,800 at Cambridge, but it made a pre-tax loss before extraordinary items of UKP4m last year. The combined company will have annual sales of some UKP500m and will employ over 11,000 people. Trading in the shares of Cambridge Instruments was suspended at 58 pence on the London International Stock Exchange yesterday at the company’s request pending further details of the proposed merger agreement, which is promised in about three weeks. The Wild GIS joint venture with Prime Computer involves 100 people and will develop mapping software. Prime also took a minority stake in the System9 division of Wild Leitz, which makes surveying and mapping instruments, when the Wild GIS venture was extablished (CI No 1,122).
